""I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her," President Donald Trump announced recently on Truth Social, pulling one of America's most enduring legends into the political present. For more than eight decades, Earhart's 1937 disappearance has been fertile ground for speculation: pulp stories, Hollywood films, and best-selling books that turned a tragic accident into lurid melodrama or unsolved mystery."
"Underlying all these tales is the idea that Washington concealed the truth, a narrative that has never withstood serious scrutiny. Aviation historians are nearly unanimous: Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ran out of fuel over the Pacific. The ocean swallowed the Lockheed Electra, as it had countless other planes. Earhart's own family's Bible records, which I saw firsthand while researching my recent biography of Earhart, put it plainly: "Lost at sea about July 4-5-6, 1937, in the Pacific.""
A presidential order to declassify records revived public interest in Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. Earhart’s 1937 vanishing spawned pulp stories, films, and books that mythologized the outcome. Aviation historians largely conclude that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific. Family Bible records record the loss at sea on July 4–6, 1937. Earhart sought recognition for courage, flying achievements, and women’s advocacy, but popular imagination transformed her into a national ghost story. Persistent hoaxes reflect public appetite for dramatic explanations rather than mundane tragedy.
Read at The Atlantic
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